


Passing By

by mmmdraco



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/pseuds/mmmdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The go world has no idea who they're dealing with when it comes to Shindou Hikaru. Only Touya Akira seems to have a clue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing By

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the characters, I mean no harm, I have no money... Stuff like that. Yeah.

Touya Akira was reading through a copy of Weekly Go one morning at the table while eating breakfast. He scowled at the words of one particular article through the half-chewed rice in his mouth and flipped the page quickly to the continuation of the article. Once finished, he folded the pages back together and shoved the offending pile of paper to the corner of the table. It was at this point that his father finally said, "What is troubling you?"

"Nothing is troubling me. I'm just exasperated at the foolishness that the Go world still contains."

"Not a problem with Zama again, is it?"

Akira scowled again. "Not in particular, but he is part of the problem." He sighed and picked at his breakfast forcefully. "It's about Shindou."

Setting down his chopsticks, Touya Kouyou nodded his head. "Yes. Go on."

"They're all writing him off. It's just... foolish."

"Who's to say who will end up the foolish one in the end?" 

Akira slammed his chopsticks down. "He is my rival, Father. I know him and I know his go. I play him more than anyone else. They're questioning how he even made it into the Meijin title match when they should be asking what will happen when he wins it."

Touya Kouyou picked his chopsticks up again. "Isn't it a little too soon for that?"

"If you think that, Father, you might be a fool as well."

\----------

The first match is a slaughter. Hatanaka, even though he was himself young, underestimates Shindou and loses by a large enough margin that Akira is embarassed for him, but not surprised. With his fan resting comfortably on one thigh, Shindou is in charge of the game from the beginning. His hands lay heavy on the board and he infiltrates territory deeply with no fear of how he will overcome his opponent's stones. When Hatanaka resigns with the drop of a handful of stones onto the go ban, there is a finality to it that the gesture usually lacks. 

The next Weekly Go covers the match, but fails to discuss the sheer genius behind the game as though they can't quite believe that a 3-dan could possibly play that well. It's written off as a fluke. Akira is enraged by it again and actually begins to tear through the article before begrudgingly taping it back into place because his father has not read it yet, and since he is home from China for the month, Akira tries to remember how to be a good son again.

The second match is closer, but it is still far and away Shindou's win. For every remarkable play Hatanaka makes, Shindou makes two that are twice as remarkable. When he slaps down tengen in chuuban, Hatanaka laughs and thinks he's won, but the stone is the beginning of the downfall of his game. It is a nearly devastating loss, but Weekly Go plays it up as a close game and Akira wonders if they've started letting insei write these articles.

The third match is closer still, but it is still Shindou's win and Akira can tell that he is playing the game for the fun of it. He's learned the opponent and knows the win is his for the taking, so now it's just a matter of playing. Despite Hikaru winning three of the five games and therefore taking the title, everyone is still more complimentary of the game that Hatanaka played as though Hikaru hadn't accomplished something amazing by taking the go world's most prestigious title as a 3-dan. 

Akira can't stand it. He knows things about Hikaru that most people don't, and that's the very thing making the whole situation so infuriating. One year ago, Akira's own talent barely eclipsed Shindou, and Akira was known as the best and the brightest of the younger generation and leaps and bounds above all but the best of the older generations. But sometime in the last year, Shindou had passed him by with aplomb. Akira still won games occasionally, but he was fairly certain that no one else could play the deep game that Shindou did. Not even Akira.

They still all thought he was some lucky upstart brat. But while Shindou managed to be all of those things, he was also so many more. In five years, he'd gone from his first game to being Meijin. And no one else understood the implications of it. Only Akira. Akira who had lost game after game recently, but only to Shindou. And Akira could now reliably best Ogata every other game. But no one else knew this side of Shindou. They saw youth and dyed hair and kitschy shirts and that brash personality, and they didn't see that he almost had the Hand of God. 

The Hand of God. The Perfect Game. The Divine Move. They were all just dreams to be had. They were aspirations and nothing more. But for Shindou, they were nearly in sight. He was close enough to glimpse perfection and as close as Akira thought he might be trailing behind, the divide seemed to grow with every game. 

It made Akira want to storm down to the Weekly Go offices to offer an interview about his feelings about his rivalry and why they were more than justified. But he wasn't a title holder. He was the son of a former Meijin, but only a 4-dan himself. He'd lost several recent games to Shindou. And if they were so quick to put down Shindou as nothing, then Akira was less than nothing. And if all he was... was the go he played...

_I have nothing..._


End file.
